Complete Works (70 page)

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What of that?

V
ISITOR
: Well, divide all cases of knowledge in this way, calling the one sort practical knowledge, the other purely theoretical.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I grant you these as two classes of that single thing, knowledge, taken as a whole.

V
ISITOR
: Then shall we posit the statesman and king and slave-master, and the manager of a household as well, as one thing, when we refer to them by all these names, or are we to say that they are as many sorts of expertise as the names we use to refer to them? Or rather, let me take this way, and you follow me.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What way is that?

[259]
V
ISITOR
: This one. If someone who is himself in private practice is capable of advising a doctor in public employment, isn’t it necessary for him to be called by the same professional title as the person he advises?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, won’t we say that the person who is clever at giving advice to a king of a country, although he is himself a private individual, himself has the expert knowledge that the ruler himself ought to have possessed?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: We will.

[b] V
ISITOR
: But the knowledge that belongs to the true king is the knowledge of kingship?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And isn’t it the case that the person who possesses this, whether he happens to be a ruler or a private citizen, in all circumstances, in virtue of his possession of the expertise itself, will correctly be addressed as an expert in kingship?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: That’s fair.

V
ISITOR
: Next, a household manager and a slave-master are the same thing.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, surely there won’t be any difference, so far as ruling is concerned, between the character of a large household, on the one hand, and the bulk of a small city on the other?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: None.

[c] V
ISITOR
: So, in answer to the question we were asking ourselves just now, it’s clear that there is one sort of expert knowledge concerned with all these things; whether someone gives this the name of expertise in kingship, or statesmanship, or household management, let’s not pick any quarrel with him.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I agree—why should we?

V
ISITOR
: But this much is clear, that the power of any king to maintain his rule has little to do with the use of his hands or his body in general in comparison with the understanding and force of his mind.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Clearly.

V
ISITOR
: Then do you want us to assert that the king is more closely [d] related to the theoretical sort of knowledge than to the manual or generally practical sort?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: In that case we shall put all these things together—the statesman’s knowledge and the statesman, the king’s knowledge and the king—as one, and regard them as the same?
⁹

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Clearly.

V
ISITOR
: Well, would we be proceeding in the right order, if after this we divided theoretical knowledge?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Certainly.

V
ISITOR
: So look closely to see if we can detect some break in it.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of what sort? Tell me.

V
ISITOR
: Of this sort. We agreed, I think, that there is such a thing as an [e] art of calculation?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And I suppose it belongs absolutely among the theoretical sorts of expertise.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite.

V
ISITOR
: Because once it recognizes that there is a difference between numbers, there surely isn’t any further job we’ll assign to it than judging what it has recognized?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: No, certainly not.

V
ISITOR
: And all master-builders too
¹⁰
—they don’t act as workers themselves, but manage workers.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: In so far—I suppose—as what the master-builder provides is understanding rather than manual labor.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Just so.

V
ISITOR
: It would be right to say, then, that he has a share in the theoretical
[260]
sort of knowledge?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Certainly.

V
ISITOR
: But it belongs to him, I think, once he has given his professional judgment, not to be finished or to take his leave, in the way that the expert in calculation took his, but to assign whatever is the appropriate task to each group of workers until they complete what has been assigned to them.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: That’s correct.

V
ISITOR
: So both all sorts of knowledge like this and all those that go along with the art of calculation are theoretical, but these two classes of [b] knowledge differ from each other in so far as one makes judgments, while the other directs?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: They appear to do so.

V
ISITOR
: So if we divided off two parts of theoretical knowledge as a whole, referring to one as directive and the other as making judgments, would we say that it had been divided suitably?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes, at least according to my view.

V
ISITOR
: But if people are doing something together, it is enough if they agree with one another.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Quite.

V
ISITOR
: So for as long as we are sharing in the present task, we should say goodbye to what everybody else may think.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of course.

[c] V
ISITOR
: So tell me: in which of these two sorts of expertise should we locate the expert in kingship? In the one concerned with making judgments, as if he were some sort of spectator, or shall we rather locate him as belonging to the directive sort of expertise, seeing that he is master of others?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: In the second, of course.

V
ISITOR
: Then we should need to look at directive expertise in its turn, to see if it divides somewhere. And to me it seems that it does so somewhere in this direction: in the way that the expertise of the retail-dealer is distinguished from that of the ‘self-seller’ or producer who sells [d] his own products, so the class of kings appears set apart from the class of heralds.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How so?

V
ISITOR
: The retailer, I think, takes over someone else’s products, which have previously been sold, and sells them on, for a second time.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, the class of heralds takes over directions that have been thought up by someone else, and itself issues them for a second time to another group.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Very true.

V
ISITOR
: So—shall we mix together the expertise of the king with that [e] of the interpreter, the person who gives the time to the rowers, the seer, the herald, and many other sorts of expertise related to these, just because they all have the feature of issuing directions? Or do you want us to make up a name in line with the analogy we were using just now, since in fact the class of ‘self-directors’ happens pretty much to be without a name of its own? Should we divide these things this way, locating the class of kings as belonging to the ‘self-directing’ sort of expertise, and taking no notice of all the rest, leaving someone else to propose another name for them?
[261]
For we set up our investigation in order to find the person who rules, not his opposite.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, since this
¹¹
is at a certain distance from those others, distinguished by difference in relation to kinship, we must in turn divide it too, if we still find some cut yielding to us in it?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Certainly.

V
ISITOR
: And what’s more, we seem to have one: follow on and make the cut with me.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Where?

V
ISITOR
: All those in control of others that we can think of as employing [b] directions—we shall find them issuing their directions, won’t we, for the sake of something’s coming into being?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: And it’s not at all difficult to separate into two all of those things that come into being.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How?

V
ISITOR
: I imagine that, of all of them taken together, some are inanimate and some are animate.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And it’s by these very things that we’ll cut the part of the theoretical which is directive, if indeed we wish to cut it.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: How?

V
ISITOR
: By assigning part of it to the production of inanimate things, [c] part to that of animate things; and in this way it will all immediately be divided into two.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I agree absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: So then let’s leave one of these parts to one side, and take up the other; and then let’s divide the whole of it into two parts.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Which of the two parts do you say we should take up?

V
ISITOR
: I suppose it must be the one that issues directions in relation to living creatures. For surely it is not the case that the expert knowledge that belongs to a king is ever something that oversees inanimate things, as if it were the knowledge of the master-builder; it is something nobler, which always has its power among living creatures and in relation to [d] just these.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Correct.

V
ISITOR
: Now, as one can observe, either the production and rearing of living creatures is done singly, or it is a caring for creatures together
¹²
in herds.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Correct.

V
ISITOR
: But we’ll certainly not find the statesman rearing individual creatures, like some ox-driver or groom, but rather resembling a horse-breeder or cowherd.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: It certainly seems so, now you say it.

V
ISITOR
: Well then: when it comes to rearing living creatures, are we to [e] call
¹³
the shared rearing of many creatures together a sort of ‘herd-rearing’ or ‘collective rearing’?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: Whichever turns out to fit, in the course of the argument.

V
ISITOR
: Well said, Socrates; and if you persevere in not paying serious attention to names, you will be seen to be richer in wisdom as you advance to old age. But now we must do just as you instruct. Do you see how by
[262]
showing the collective rearing of herds to be twin in form one will make what is now being sought in double the field then be sought in half of that?

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: I shall try my hardest. It seems to me that there is a different sort of rearing of human beings, and in turn another sort where animals are concerned.

V
ISITOR
: Yes, absolutely, you’ve made a very keen and courageous division! But let’s try to avoid
this
happening to us again.

Y
OUNG
S
OCRATES
: What sort of thing?

[b] V
ISITOR
: Let’s not take off one small part on its own, leaving many large ones behind, and without reference to real classes; let the part bring a real class along with it. It’s a really fine thing to separate off immediately what one is searching for from the rest, if one gets it right—as you thought you had the right division, just before, and hurried the argument on, seeing it leading to human beings; but in fact, my friend, it’s not safe to make thin cuts; it’s safer to go along cutting through the middle of things, and that way one will be more likely to encounter real classes. This makes all the [c] difference in relation to philosophical investigations.